Musical Written By Yale Grad Who Died In Crash Headed To NYC Festival

'Independents' Is Work Of Journalist And Playwright Marina Keegan

(Courtesy Of Keegan Family )

May 31, 2012|By FRANK RIZZO, frizzo@courant.com, The Hartford Courant

"Independents," a folk rock musical written by Marina Keegan, the 22-year-old journalist-playwright who died Saturday in a car accident on Cape Cod days after graduating magna cum laude at Yale, may have a life in the theater.

Money is being raised through a Kickstarter fundraising campaign to produce the work she wrote when she was an undergraduate. The goal is to raise $5,000 or more to be able to produce the work in August at the New York International Fringe Festival. So far the campaign has raised $3,400 from 65 backers. The deadline is July 13.

Keegan, who was an English major, wrote the show with two other students: Mark Sonnenblick, who wrote the show's lyrics and Stephen Feigenbaum, who wrote the music. Charlie Polinger directed the show, which had a production last December at New Haven's Off Broadway Theater, presented by the Yale Drama Coalition. It was produced by Katherine Nelson.

"Independents" was accepted by the festival and is on its website. The festival runs Aug. 10 to Aug. 26. The show will have five performances during the two-week festival. Dates and venue have not been announced.

"Things are really intense at this moment,' says Feigenbaum. "I talked to Marina's mom on the night she died and she told us that we really had to go forward with the show. So doing it has become all the more urgent for us. In some ways having the show as the task in front of us is the best way [to deal with her death]. But we want to treat the show as its own entity, though obviously its going to resonate given the situation."

Polinger says that Keegan had ambitions for the show "and she felt it was a unique in its voice and the era that it explored and that it had the potential to reach a younger generation."

Polinger says Keegan, whose previous play was "Utility Monster" at the undergrad Yale Dramatic Association, drew inspiration from Annie Baker, the young playwright whose "Circle Mirror Transformation" and "The Aliens" made her a major figure on the theater scene. "Marina wanted to write the way people actually talked," says Polinger, "and make it feel real while at the same time having poetry in its overall themes."

"Independents" chronicles nine friends living and working on a Revolutionary War-era tall ship in 2012. The show is described as follows: "Using historical re-enactment as a cover, the eclectic crew of 20somethings smuggles marijuana from Nova Scotia to Gloucester — but when their captain disappears, financial pressures force the friends to attempt re-enactment for real."

The show is also described as "friends stuck in transition not sure when they'll grow up or if they already have, falling in and out of love and facing questions about the future they don't want to answer."

Keegan, a resident of Wayland, Mass., died in a single vehicle rollover that occurred when her boyfriend, Michael Gocksch, 22, of Centerport, N.Y., lost control of the Lexus he was driving and hit a guardrail in Dennis, Mass. Keegan was pronounced dead at the scene. Gocksch, who graduated with Keegan on May 21 in New Haven, survived the crash without serious injuries.

Keegan was a writer who was a columnist for the Yale Daily News and was about to begin working as an editorial assistant at The New Yorker, where she was an intern last summer. She was planning to move with friends to Brooklyn in June.

Keegan's memorial service is planned for Saturday at the First Parish in Wayland, according to the Associated Press.